Wednesday, July 23, 2014

And the Countdown Begins...

My internship is winding down and I'm sad to say that I have less than three weeks left in Kansas! I feel like I want to stay a bit longer, but I suppose I still have to finish school. Last week was a fantastic mid 70s temperature-wise, but today it was 101 feels like 110 and I was glad it was my day off. Lucky for me it's supposed to be just as hot tomorrow! I'm starting to work on my intern project, which consists of making some form of enrichment for any animal in the zoo. Still working out the kinks at the moment, but never fear! I will definitely post the finished results.

I've gotten much more comfortable with my Wildlife Stage shows! I wouldn't say I'm scared of public speaking, but doing live education animal shows twice a week has definitely helped me grow more comfortable with talking to complete strangers. My favorite part is when I interest people enough to come to back-to-back shows, because that means I did a good enough job that they wanted to come back.

In rainforest the summer heat is getting to the animals because the glass dome and the heat are overworking the air conditioning there, so we've started the extensive task of catching the free roaming (within the dome) birds and bats and relocating them to more air conditioned enclosures. UPDATE: All the bats were caught successfully! Huzzah!

Keeper Appreciation Week kicked off yesterday with a friendly game of Assassin (I lost today unfortunately), using small amounts of water. We have a fun week's worth of activities planned for keeper staff and interns that I'm really looking forward to!

My training with Dolly is going well for the most part. She's gone from being scared of the target pole to usually touching the target with only a little hesitation. Unfortunately the Topeka Zoo had to euthanize Jesse, the older male Reticulated Giraffe. The full story is here.